THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND, 23 
Muiller’s stupendous work, The Fertilisation of Flowers (it has 
recently been translated from the German) gives very clear and 
plausible reasons for the concealment of the 
pollen and the peculiar formation of the 
nectaries in plants, and I am sure it will 
add to the reader’s pleasure in studying the 
Showy Orchis if I insert some extracts. é 
“Freely exposed, pollen is liable to be ae oF tore, 
spoilt by rain, devoured by flies and beetles,  4¢9"##2 — /uctuosa, 
with pollen-masses at- 
or carried away by pollen-collecting bees. tached to its proboscis, 
. . . Pollintum removed by 
Of these contingencies, the first is wholly a pencil and before un- 
. dergoing the movement 
an evil, the second becomes advantageous of depression (Both 
fromDarwin ) 
if any considerable amount of pollen is 
conveyed to the stigma, and the third almost always results 
in fertilization, and is therefore altogether advantageous. 
Concealment of the pollen, as of the honey, must have been 
brought about, in the first place, as a protection from rain. 
Since with this advantage comes the disadvantage that the 
sheltered pollen is less likely to be touched and placed on the 
stigma by insect visitors, concealment of the stamens has not 
become general. .... And all flowers with hidden anthers 
have only been able to shelter their pollen from rain in so far 
as they have developed other adaptations for particular visitors, 
which compensate for the less general access of pollen-carrying 
insects. For this reason, flowers with hidden pollen (Orchids, 
for instance) afford the most conspicuous examples of adapta- 
tion in form and in dimensions to a more or less narrow circle 
of visitors. But the more perfectly flowers are adapted for 
cross-fertilization by particular insects, the more unlikely does 
it become that other insects visiting the flowers will effect 
cross-fertilization, and the more will such visits of other insects 
be useless or injurious. So concealment of the pollen is useful 
(toa subsidiary degree) in limiting insect visitors. . . . 
The mechanism is so perfect and so effectual in these flowers, 
